by Jeannie Lin
“You’ve gotten thinner. What are you doing out alone on the street?”
He was full of questions himself. “What took you so long? Were you really on a special assignment for the Emperor?”
There was a smudge on his cheek. Absently I wiped at it only to have him squirm away in protest.
“How is Mother?” I asked.
I saw how his expression blanked. He gave a shrug and nodded toward a nearby alleyway. “We have been staying down there.”
I knew immediately why Tian was loitering in the street. It was the same reason he spent so much time wandering around the fish pond before trudging home from school. The same reason I had been dreading my return home even as I longed for it.
For the last month, a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Now my heart was heavy with guilt because part of me had enjoyed the freedom of not watching, day by day, as the supply of rice and opium dwindled down to nothing. I had enjoyed the freedom of being responsible for no one but myself.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Physician Lo asked if I needed his assistance, but I declined. In Linhua, he had only a vague notion of Mother’s situation. He knew I secretly purchased opium but never questioned it. I had asked him once about methods of treating the symptoms of opium withdrawal.
“There is nothing to be done but to keep the patient comfortable and wait it out,” he had told me.
He was right, except there was no such thing as comfort. And I had never had the courage to let the withdrawal run its course.
With a mournful sort of silence, Tian led me down the alley where our family and many of the other families of Linhua had taken shelter. Mother’s shameful secret was no longer a secret. From the moment I entered the narrow space, I could hear her moans of anguish echoing against walls.
I saw Nan first, huddled over a figure on the ground. The loyal maidservant was speaking soothing words, pressing a wet cloth to Mother’s forehead. A makeshift shelter had been constructed around them, fashioned out of bamboo and wooden scraps over which a curtain could be hung.
“Your work?” I asked Tian.
He nodded wordlessly.
“It’s very well made.”
This is what we did. Talk of inconsequential things to reassure one another. As a distraction.
It never worked.
Nan looked up and her face brightened with relief when she saw me. Worry lines had carved deep grooves around her eyes and mouth, telling the story of all she had endured since I was gone.
“How long?” I asked.
She didn’t need to ask what I meant. “Two days.”
Two days since my mother had last had any opium. She lay curled into a tight ball now, her hands clenched into fists while she writhed in agony. Her clothes were soiled and her hair ragged about her face.
Suddenly, she lurched forward and Nan hurried to place a pot beneath her, holding her head while she was sick. I looked away. All around us, the other squatters from our village huddled silently in their corners, averting their eyes, out of respect, out of revulsion, out of pity. Perhaps all three.
When Nan laid Mother back onto the bamboo mat, I went to her, brushing back her matted hair with a shaking hand.
“It’s me, Mother. It’s Soling.”
She shook her head back and forth, whimpering like a wounded animal. I hated feeling so helpless. Despite my study of healing and acupuncture and treating the symptoms of sickness, there was nothing I could do for her. The same thing had happened before when Mother had tried to wean herself off of opium. I had run to Cui’s den to get the next dose myself.
But I’d been a child then. Sixteen and unsure of myself.
Out on the street, Zuo waited beside Physician Lo. For now the governor and his functionaries assumed I had the crown prince’s favor. I could take my family away from this forsaken alleyway and provide comfort and warmth and a small measure of security. Yet, I hesitated. Even now, while Mother lay on the ground surrounded by refuse.
Though my eyes filled with tears at the thought, I wanted to send Zuo away. I would stay here with Mother. This was our burden to bear, not anyone else’s.
Mother had once been the wife of a high-ranking official, a well-respected lady. She wouldn’t want anyone to see her like this. Opium was her escape and her private shame. It was mine as well.
It had always been easier to scrape the coins together and buy the opium than face the reality of how low our family had fallen, but there was no hiding anymore. I was awake.
“Mother.”
My voice caught in my throat. I didn’t know if she could hear me or if she was too far gone.
“I’m going to take you somewhere. A safe place.”
“I can’t stand it,” she moaned. For the first time, her eyes opened. They were swollen and glassy. “Please, Soling—”
Please bring more opium. Please ease the pain.
“No, Mother. No more.” I took her hand firmly. Her fingers were cold in my palm. “It’s going to get better, I promise.”
But first it was going to get a lot worse.
***
Within hours, Zuo had us situated in the governor’s mansion. He arranged for a carriage and stood by respectfully as we helped Mother onto it with me beneath one arm and Nan on the other. When we arrived at the front gate, the governor’s servants stood ready to receive us. Rooms had been prepared and tea set out. The efficiency of how everything was managed convinced me that Zuo wouldn’t merely be a governor’s assistant for long.
We brought Mother into the inner women’s quarters and took to her care ourselves. The servants were of the proper and discreet sort, holding their tongues as they helped draw bathwater and bring fresh clothing. They saw to our needs while not interfering.
I was grateful. It still shamed me deeply to have to put ourselves in the hands of others.
Tian remained quiet in the courtyard, picking through the contents of his writing box. I went to him once Mother had settled down enough to sleep.
“What is that?” I asked, looking over the contraption he had set on the ground.
“Nothing,” he murmured.
“Nothing?”
He had tied together several thin bamboo rods to create a frame and was attempting to attach one of his writing brushes onto it with a length of string.
“I don’t want to say until I know the design is worthy,” he amended.
“Is there anything you need, then?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Something to act as a counterweight.”
My heart swelled for my brother, this quiet, thoughtful boy.
“I met someone during my trip,” I told him. “Someone you might find interesting.”
I wondered where Chen Chang-wei could be. Was he still in the war council, discussing the city’s defenses? By now he would have told them of our encounter with Lady Su’s faction along the river. Any day now, we would be under siege. Everyone was waiting for the inevitable, I could sense it in the air.
One would think that I would feel safe now behind the thick stone walls of Changsha, with the city guard and Banner army to protect us. But I didn’t feel any more secure. The approaching army was one of thousands, and they were no longer afraid of imperial authority.
Nan was calling me back inside. I took one final look at Tian’s invention—the writing brush was now dangling like a pendulum—and told him I looked forward to seeing it when it was finished.
Then I returned to Mother’s vigil.
***
It had been a long time, I believed, since my mother had gotten any pleasure from opium’s murky embrace. There were times when she seemed to hate it. There were times when she seemed to hate herself for wanting it. It had broken her down and stripped her of everything; this relentless hunger for a substance that would never leave her satisfied.
I was so tempted to believe, as Yang did, that someone else had done this to her. Or that even the opium itself was a monster, a malevolent and greedy thing.
But it was really just a vapor. A gas, formless and accommodating, flowing in to fill an empty space and taking on the shape of its container. Sometimes when I saw her in the midst of an opium stupor, her eyes vacant, I thought of her as an empty container that once held my mother.
As I sat beside Mother now, listening to her cry, watching her writhe and tremble, holding her head while she was sick, I forced myself to believe that this was a necessary phase and she would get better. There would be an end to this.
I hated to see Mother suffer, but she at least she wasn’t empty anymore.
As the day wore on into evening, we tied her hands down to the bed. She had started clawing at herself as if she wanted to tear off her own skin.
“It itches, it itches,” she wailed when we told her to stop.
After she’d torn a gash across her cheek, I had called for the servants to fetch rope. Then I held Mother’s wrists while Nan bound her. Our old maidservant and I took turns sleeping beside her in fits and starts while Mother tossed about.
I wished that I had been selfish and asked Physician Lo to stay with us. I would have asked him whether it was possible to die from opium withdrawal.
We had an adjoining room where Tian slept. Whenever I slumped onto the bed beside him, he would ask me softly how Mother was. That’s how I knew he could hear everything that happened in the next room. He slept no better than we did.
The next morning, Mother seemed a little better. I was able to coax her to take some water and broth, but she refused even the thinnest of rice congee.
When I sat with her, she was able to prop her back up against the wall and face me. There was a gray pallor to her complexion and her lips were pale. Her hair had been pinned into a bun, but the coils were now tangled like a spider’s web on her head.
“While I was away, I met an old acquaintance of the family,” I told her.
“Oh?” Her voice was strained and her hands remained clenched in her lap.
“Engineer Liu Yentai. From Peking,” I added when there was no sign of recognition in her eyes.
Mother wasn’t being deliberately dismissive. She was trying hard to take her mind away from the cravings. Every muscle in her must have ached to the bone.
“Old Liu,” she conceded finally.
She didn’t inquire about him, so I went on. “Liu Yentai told me stories of how you came to the Ministry disguised as a candidate for the science exams. He said you had a talent for mathematics. I never knew that, Mother.”
Silence.
I cast my eyes downward. “I also saw Yang Hanzhu.”
“Yang,” she echoed, her tone flat.
“Yang the alchemist,” I prompted. “He worked with Father on the gunpowder experiments. Father always spoke of how brilliant—”
“I don’t want to hear about these people,” she cut in irritably. Her hands curled so tight that the knuckles whitened. “I don’t want to hear about anything having to do with your father or our past life.”
“But what if we could return to the capital?”
“There’s nothing for us in Peking,” she retorted. “Why would we go back?”
Agitated, Mother lay back down and curled her knees up toward her chest. She looked so childishly small; my own mother.
When she didn’t say anything for a long time, I came to touch her lightly on the shoulder. Any touch was an irritant in her condition.
“It pains me, Soling.”
“The tea I brewed should dull the ache in your joints.”
“No.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “The memories. They hurt inside. Once they start, I can’t stop them.”
Though she didn’t want any, I gave her more tea, spooning the brew into her mouth.
“The worst is over, Mother.” I promised.
“I need time to pass by,” she moaned softly. “For it to go by faster. Why won’t it go by?”
Mother tried hard to fall asleep, and I said nothing more that might dredge up painful memories.
When she finally did sleep, I continued to watch over her fearfully. Mother looked much better now than the day before, but she looked far from well. Though opium had broken her down, she would take the drug in a heartbeat if it were offered to her. She would inhale it into her lungs more dearly than she did oxygen.
Chapter Twenty-nine
When Chang-wei came to visit the next morning, I felt as if I were nothing but skin stretched over bone. In addition to tending to Mother, another earthquake had shaken the city with enough force to knock items from the shelves. It had happened in the middle of the night during one of those rare moments when I had drifted off to sleep.
He was polite enough to say nothing about my appearance, but he did lean solicitously toward me, asking in a gentle voice if I needed anything.
“Perhaps something to act as a counterweight?” I said.
His eyebrows rose in confusion.
“Can we take a walk?” I asked instead of trying to explain.
Even from the parlor room in the front of the house, I thought I could hear Mother’s moaning. She would be mortified if Chen Chang-wei knew anything of her suffering. He was one of Father’s former associates and the man the two of them had selected in a bygone time to be my husband.
We started in a circuit around the surrounding streets. This area was one of the wealthier neighborhoods and showed none of the squalor or sickness of the refugee quarters. The morning air was clean and crisp, and I breathed it in deep, trying to banish the phantoms of the sickroom.
Chang-wei was dressed once more in an official robe and cap denoting his rank. Something about the clothing restored his sense of formality around me, or maybe it was our return to civilization. I wasn’t certain of the cause, but he seemed different this morning.
“I hear you have found your family.”
“Yes. We’re very fortunate to have been reunited.”
“I came to pay my respects to Jin Furen,” he referred to my mother respectfully by her married title.
“Mother is resting now,” I said quickly. “But . . . but perhaps you can visit her later.”
“She is well?”
“Yes.” A lie. “What did the war council say when they heard of Lady Su’s faction?”
“The governor and his council are recruiting more men for the volunteer militia. They’ve also asked me to assess their defenses. A plea was sent out for imperial reinforcements several weeks ago, but it’s unlikely any help will arrive in time for the initial offensive.”
“Initial offensive,” I echoed thoughtfully. “Oddly, I’m surprised there hasn’t been an attack against Changsha yet. I thought for certain the rebel army would be upon us by now.”
The rebels who had captured us were preparing for an attack on the city; I was certain of it. But why were they holding back? Every day that passed bought more time for reinforcements from the imperial army to arrive.
“No one knows when they will come, but they will,” Chang-wei assured me. “Secretary Zuo has recounted their movements over the last year to me. At first they struck smaller cities, gathering supplies and troops. Changsha would be their largest target yet—I’m being tiresome, aren’t I?”
I shook my head fiercely, mid-yawn. “It’s not you.”
He grinned and my stomach fluttered in response. Then his expression turned serious. “Soling, there is something I have wanted to say for a long time—”
When he came toward me, I practically jumped away. My back collided into the wall that surrounded the governor’s mansion.
“You’re very tired,” he amended, stepping back. I immediately regretted my impulse.
“Chang-wei, we—” The words caught in my throat. How
could one hope for something, yet fear it all the same? “We’re friends now, aren’t we?”
“Yes.” His jaw tightened. “Friends.”
He didn’t know anything of my life or of my family’s situation. How far we had fallen. Chang-wei had offered to help us, perhaps guided by his loyalty to my father’s memory, but he didn’t know what a burden that would be and why I couldn’t accept. I was struggling to find the words to explain, when the ground lurched beneath my feet.
Chang-wei caught me as I stumbled. We held on to each other as the ground shook.
“Another earthquake,” he murmured.
My pulse beat like a hummingbird’s wings with his arms around me. Even when the trembling stopped, he held on; a single steady point in my world.
“Soling!”
I pushed against his chest, and Chang-wei released me just as my brother appeared at the gate.
“That was from the opposite direction of the last one!”
Only after he’d given his excited report did Tian notice Chang-wei beside me. My younger brother bowed awkwardly, unable to muster any proper greeting.
“This is Imperial Engineer Chen,” I introduced.
“Sir,” Tian mumbled, head still bowed.
My heart was pounding though the shaking had subsided. There was nothing to feel ashamed about, I told myself. Nothing at all.
Except that I had liked the feel of Chang-wei’s arms around me, even though we were out in the open where anyone could see us. Even though I was about to tell him that it was best we go our own ways from here forward.
“Young Mister Jin,” Chang-wei greeted. “Tell me, how can you know the origin of the earthquake?”
Tian fidgeted, uncomfortable with such honorifics.
I was curious as well. “Show us,” I told him gently.
Obediently, Tian turned and led us back into the courtyard. From there, he headed toward our private chambers, and my heart lodged in my throat. Mother was in the depths of her opium sickness and not fit for visitors.